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McRae blocks out any issues
DELAWARE
Behind her trademarked goggles, LaNiece McRae was a bright-eyed freshman on the Ohio Wesleyan women’s basketball team.
The 2011 Chaney grad was the second-leading scorer for the Battling Bishops and led the team in rebounds, while swatting an unprecedented 65 blocks.
“That’s her game,” OWU coach Stacey Ungashick-Reed. “She’s a force down low.”
McRae may be a little undersized, standing 5-foot-11, to be bodied up with girls that consistently check in at 6-2 or taller, but she’s forged her defense-first mentality under Cowboy coaches Allen Thorne and Bernard Bolha. In a tournament game against East last year, she had five blocks.
This season, on December 29 against Penn State-DuBois, McRae broke a school and Bishop’s Hoops for Hope tournament record with eight blocks.
“I think my role has always been to have strong defense,” McRae said. “Anything I can do to help my team win is what I want to do.”
Although the Bishops compiled just a 9-17 record and fell in the first round of the North Coast Atlantic Conference tournament, McRae enjoyed her first year of college ball.
“It’s been a lot of fun,” she said. “Just to be part of a team at the next level is great. It’s a big step up from high school because the game is faster and the girls are more talented.”
But that enhanced competition has made her better.
“LaNiece was on our radar for a while [in high school],” Ungashick-Reed said. “She has grown so much since then because she’s worked to get better. There was a lot asked of her in her freshman year, being a starter and all, and she’s answered the call.
“She still has so much potential and it’ll be an exciting three more years for us — and her.”
McRae looks forward to improving year by year and embraces the challenges along the way.
“You have to stay organized and be on top of everything,” she said about being a student-athlete. “It can be hard to study with practices, games and team events going on.”
On top of working at a local child-care facility, McRae has earned high academic honors and majors in Early Childhood Education.